Each one of us wants to be the best. Each one of us dreams of being the next superstar or the next billionaire. But to hit the perfect score, we must be able to hit the bullseye at each turn.

To be a holistic hero of your life, you need to hit the bullseye in all the life domains that you pick. You need to excel in all the roles that you have chosen to play. Let’s see how we can spice up our lives.

Choose the right partner (a spouse, a teammate, a founder, a mentor, a parent): Whenever start-up investors are asked how do they decide to invest in an idea, they say that they primarily observe two things – the team and the technology. If the co-founder is alone, they would generally want him/her to partner with someone who could complement his/her skills. They check the ‘trust’ quotient between the co-founders otherwise.

The course of life depends on the choice of appropriate partner in various domains of life. The ‘right’ choice boosts up all the building blocks of our life while ‘not so right’ choice dooms our destiny.

Choosing a right life partner is the most crucial decision that decides your happiness on a day-to-day basis.

Never take this decision in haste or under pressure. Own this decision completely by thinking it through.

Your Partnerial excellence depends largely on the personality of the partner whom you choose.

Choose the right workplace – If you wish to have a career and not a job, if you wish to earn respect as well as money, you need to find the right place to work.

Find a company with a culture that will not only accept you as a young mother(when you become one) but will also celebrate the value you bring to the workplace as a parent.

Find a great place to work that trusts you. ‘Trust’ is the key factor in making an organization a great place to work.

A great workplace is one where the employees:

‘Trust’ the people they work for.

Have ‘pride’ in what they do.

‘Enjoy’ the people they work with.

From the manager’s perspective, a great workplace is where they achieve organizational objectives with employees who give their personal best and work together as a team/family in the environment of trust.

Your professional excellence depends largely on the kind of work-place you choose.

Pivot proactively – Never feel rigid when you zero in on a subject to study or when you choose a profession. Be ready to listen to the changes that happen within you and make corresponding changes in your choices proactively.

A year or two studying chemistry can easily be replaced by the next few years in comedy/creative writing classes if that is what you realize about yourself. Do not get into studying chemistry because you do not want to waste these two years or because your parents will be mad at you.

Even after marriage, take your time to figure out if you both chose the right person. Though we do not cease to change even after getting married, we at least know the tributaries of our river. Share the various plans or dreams that you have for future.

Please try to make final pivot before getting into being parents.

Change your partner, if you must without procrastinating and foolishly believing that ‘Things will improve’.

There is no magic paint that can fill the cracks in the relationship wall.

The cracks emerge again after a few months, through the thick layer of freshly applied paint.

Your parental excellence depends largely on the common family vision that both of you opt-in for.

Surprise Yourself – You would never know the depth of your potential unless you leave yourself free from your own thoughts about yourself.

People who are frightened of themselves will work for the people who are not afraid.

As a two or three years old, we were who we were – no fear, no self-consciousness. As we grow a little, we start seeing around, listening around and start to think “What will Mom think about me?”, “What will the teacher think about me?”, or “Oh! What will that stranger think about me?”

That is when we start losing ourselves and our real potential.

You enviously marvel at others and find them hugely better than yourself.

Rather than gaping at them, gaze inside yourself and grasp the dice that God gave you to roll.

The various roles on the dice of life are to be uniquely performed by you. No one can sing the tune of our life, no one can compose it either. Surprise yourself by composing it well without sneaking into listening to the songs that others are playing.

Excellence means greatness. The very best. It is the quality of being extremely good.

You excel when you show your actions to be above the ordinary. You excel when you surpass the set standards.

How do we define ‘above ordinary’? How do we define – ‘set standards in areas of relationships – with partners, with children and parents, with oneself?

If a sportsman breaks an established record, we clearly know that he has excelled.

If a CEO achieves a turnaround and the company enters the Top- whatever list, it shows an ‘above ordinary’ performance clearly.

What about an athlete who comes from an Indian village without basic amenities, practices diligently, wins the state championship and improves her timing in the national championship. But she fails to win the nationals and Olympics is obviously a distant dream. Then, is it right to believe that she is on her road to excellence?

Earth is made up of various landforms – plains, plateaus, hills, mountains and mountain ranges.

Plains are flat pieces of land at the sea level. They can be considered the ‘beginning’ of a journey to the top.

Plateaus are elevated landforms. Plateaus do not have peaks. Their top is like a ‘table’. These are like launching pads for the journey up and ahead.

Hills are steeper than plateaus.They do not have a summit. They are gentler in slope than mountains. They could be termed as ‘set standards’ in the journey towards the top.

Mountains are large and show off a summit. They could be termed as being ‘above the standard’ or nearing the ‘excellence’ in any journey of excellence.

Mountain range is a series of mountains connected to each other and are formed in the same age. The Himalayas are the highest mountain range in the world.

There are thousands of unclimbed mountains yet, which will be conquered in coming years. It is similar to many areas of greatness where we have not yet ventured into our lives.

So, climbing a set of mountains in a mountain range would be ultimate, unbeatable excellence. Conquering a mountain summit is equally excellent which a handful of people can do.

There are many professional and amateur rock climbers who specialize in only one aspect of mountaineering i.e., rock climbing. If mountaineering is the whole life, rock climbing would be a part of it – the one that is visibly popular. So, people pick up rock climbing more often and fill their social media platforms with rock climbing pictures.

We are often told – Do what you love. Be what you are passionate about. The options given are to choose from career choices. You are expected to be passionate about doing something – engineering, automobiles, internet, coding, sports, medicine, music, art, writing, speaking, business, politics, or many other fields.

But, I am passionate about myself. Myself means my whole person, my individual self that comprises of my internal team – the professional in me, the partner in me, the parent in me, and the person in me.

I am passionate about my whole being and I wish to divide my passion into all the members of “my internal team” that I have chosen.

I do not wish to pour all my passion, all my love into my professional piece or my parental piece. I wish to sprinkle my passion, shower my passion, dab my passion for my whole being.

I wish to scale up my Professional Aravali, climb up to my Partnering Alps, try to access my Parental Karakoram and strive to touch my Personal Himalaya. I wish to be a mountaineer, not merely a rock climber.

For this, we need to change our lexicon of life. For this, we need to add SPICE to our lives.

SPICE is Sum of Partner, Parent, Professional, and Person In you to Create Excellence